


In A World

by Rasalahuge



Series: Concepts Series [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasalahuge/pseuds/Rasalahuge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wingfic for the Concept Series.</p><p>In a world where everyone has wings Rumplestiltskin is wingless</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A World

If there was one thing that Rumplestiltskin really, truly hated it was the stark belief by everyone around him that the world was black and white.

Black and white. Good and Evil. Angels and Demons.

Right from the moment he was old enough to understand the concept he had been told the same damn thing, over and over again.

If you weren’t an angel then you were a demon. If you weren’t a demon either then you weren’t a person.

In a world where everyone had wings, either white or black, Rumplestiltskin was wingless.

In a world that believed that all people with white wings were angels that wouldn’t hurt a fly but were often sanctimonious and arrogant, Rumplestiltskin was nothing.

In a world that believed that all people with black wings were demons, cruel and twisted but with so much more passion than their counterparts, Rumplestiltskin was less than nothing.

_Beast._

It was a name that even outstripped the title of coward that his father had been given for fleeing from his wife and malformed son. The same title he had earned fleeing from a battle for the sake of his unborn son. But then no one expected a beast, something little more than an animal, to understand bravery and honour could they?

It would years later that he’d learn that Milah only married him for the challenge, the adventure of taming the wild beast that lived in the village. He wasn’t much of a beast in that respect, too quiet, too shy, and too content to spend his days spinning wool, he’d been a disappointment from the first day.

It wasn’t until long after she left with the pirate that he learned how close she’d come to ridding herself of their son before he was born. When he was away at war and she was convinced the child would be like him. Only her guilt had served to get her to carry the child to term and only the pair of silken black wings that allowed the child to live past his birthing day.

That child, his beloved son Baelfire, was the only person Rumplestiltskin knew who accepted him for all his faults and failings. For his cowardice, his limp and his lack of wings. Baelfire loved him and, in a moment of terror at the thought of being the cowardly lame beast again, he betrayed that love.

It would be centuries before he found someone who could accept him as he was again. Centuries of darkness of meeting people who either looked at him with disgust ( _secure in their superiority_ ), fear ( _of the beast he was_ ) or pity ( _for the poor lost creature that tried to be a man but couldn’t possibly be_ ). He tolerated those that feared him far more than those that pitied or were disgusted.

Cora and Regina pitied him, like mother like daughter. The pair of them, his most proficient students, he alternately hated and observed with heart swelling pride and if he never let on that their pity of him hurt more than the fear everyone else felt then all the better. The pair of them already knew too many of his weaknesses, he wouldn’t give them anything else.

Jefferson feared him until the day his daughter was born and then he understood. Rumplestiltskin didn’t stop seeking the world hopper out when he retired because he stopped being useful, he stopped seeking the one man who understood but still feared. Feared that his precious daughter would end up like Rumplestiltskin.

Snow White and her Prince Charming lay somewhere between the two, feeling genuinely sorry for him while still being all too aware that he was far more than just a beast. People with pure hearts, Rumplestiltskin scoffed, only wanted to fix what couldn’t be fixed but still he wondered if he shouldn’t warn them. In the end though he didn’t; if only because the knowledge that would condemn their unborn child risked his chance at getting to a world without magic.

And then there was Belle.

_‘Do you really not have wings?’_

Belle who was different to anyone he had met in centuries.

_‘Oh… Well I suppose it’s not as if you need them, you have magic right?’_

Belle who reminded him of his son but who was completely unique.

_‘Magic must be much more useful than a pair of wings. It’s not as if they’re strong enough to let us fly’_

Belle who’d taken his lack of wings in her stride. Who never once treated him as inferior because he didn’t have them. Belle who, if Rumplestiltskin was ever the sort of man to believe in black and white, was the purest angel he had ever met ( _he wasn’t but that didn’t mean Belle wasn’t an angel_ ). Belle who he couldn’t have stopped himself from falling in love with if he’d wanted to ( _he had at first but then she’d smiled at him and only flinched from his actions and not his lack of wings and he’d wanted_ ).

Belle who, during that brief second when their lips met, made him feel as though he could fly.

( _A ridiculous notion because Belle was right, wings were vestigial and not at all practical even if he had had them_ )

But then he’d felt his power draining and he felt that same terror he had felt before ( _and lost Bae for it, he should have known_ ) only a hundred times worse. He needed his power to find Bae. But more than that he couldn’t go back to being that cowardly lame beast. Belle thought he’d given up his wings in exchange for magic, how could he tell her that he’d never had wings in the first place?

His terror and his magic, fighting back against True Love, overran his conscious mind and he hurt her. He shook her, yelled at her, threw her in the dungeon and yet he couldn’t kill her. He let her go, his angel, let her go home where she could forget the beast.

( _Just a month later he’d learn the consequences of that, learn that she suffered because of him, died because of him and he’d know that they were right. He was a beast_ )

Then he was alone again waiting and planning for the one thing he had left, a hope, a prayer that he’d see his son again.

He was afraid though. In a world without magic his lack of wings would be out there on display to everyone, they’d know it wasn’t just a side effect of the curse. He wouldn’t have the power to make people fear instead of pity him. The poor broken beast.

In the end though the fear wasn’t enough, not after centuries of hoping.

He woke in a world without magic twenty eight years later with the name of the saviour on his lips.

He thought maybe, just maybe this was his chance.

For no matter where he looked there was one thing missing from this world alongside magic.

There was no black and white here.

In a world where everyone was wingless Rumplestiltskin thought he might finally be free.


End file.
